Which Came First, the Chneh Hu or Pasembur?

FRIENDS AND RELATIVES from the post-war generation would remember the famous chneh hu stall at Padang Brown. Unfortunately, the stall is no longer there. There was another stall near my kampung at Moulmein Road close to the Pulau Tikus market which operated in the mornings. The hawker retired a few years ago. Today, there are at least two stalls, one at the Batu Lanchang market and the other, at the Cecil Street market. Both serve a credible chneh hu but which they call pasembur.

Chneh hu, or raw fish in Penang Hokkien, is a northern Malaysian Nyonya dish. Chneh specifically could mean either young, green or raw, but it is most probably the latter. My research traced its origins to the Shang dynasty in China. To the uninitiated in Malaysia at least, the dish is often, and misleadingly, referred to as Chinese pasembur.